Community Integration

Here, I’ll share some ideas to integrate with the community at our new schools. These activities are designed to inspire engaging art lessons.

Entering a new school is much like stepping into a new world; it means immersing yourself in a fresh community and crafting an identity within its unique culture. As a new art teacher, this transition is both exciting and challenging. It’s a chance to inspire, innovate, and make a meaningful impact, but it also requires a deep understanding of the community you are joining.

As art educators, we are often eager to distinguish ourselves, to break free from the conventional bounds of education and introduce fresh, creative perspectives. This drive to innovate is essential and should be embraced wholeheartedly. However, equally as powerful is the simple act of acknowledging that we are part of the same community as our students. In art we can engage with and create this sense of community in unique ways.

School Logo

The animation above is an exemplar for a Year 9 mixed media animation project I have planned. I created an animation featuring the school's logo spinning in endless loop. This task involves providing students with 5-10 printed frames from the animation. They will use oil pastels or coloured pencils to draw on top of the images. In the exemplar, I changed the theme every 10 frames to demonstrate how different students can respond uniquely, yet all their contributions can be integrated into a cohesive, collaborative piece.

By centring the project around the school's logo, we focus the lesson on the community's iconography. Creating and sharing exemplar work shows students that you are invested in both the school and their development as students.

[If you'd like to learn how to do this lesson in your school, please do contact me and I would be happy to explain the steps that I took.]

School Values

Communities often share values, goals, and principles, which schools typically define to communicate their priorities and identity. However, these are often conveyed through lengthy texts, presenting an opportunity for us in the arts to re-present these values in a more visually engaging way.

The school I will be entering uses the diagram above to communicate its values. This presents a fantastic opportunity to create a collaborative artwork that conveys these concepts through art rather than words. I envision using the above diagram as a frame for students to create their own visual responses to how they understand these terms. This invites an open discussion as a teacher to show students what these words mean to you, and through these conversations, students can begin to identify themselves through you.

Students, particularly in Years 7 and 8, often feel less connected to their school's underlying principles. Engaging them in activities that directly address these principles and value their understanding and vision can help foster a sense of belonging both in the school and in the classroom.

School Uniform

As teachers, most likely, you will not be given a school uniform to wear. However as artists, we can acknowledge its value. Wearing a school uniform fosters a sense of community by promoting equality and inclusivity, reducing socio-economic differences among students. It instills school pride and a collective identity. It allows students to identify with one another, so why not use this connection to help them identify with the subject of art?

In considering how to decorate my classroom to claim the space, I have decided to create an artwork for the school. My plan is to take the painting as shown above (Escaping Criticism, (1874) by Pere Borrell del Casso) and replace the child's clothes with the school's uniform.

I hope that this will promote a greater sense of belonging, creating a personal connection to the artwork and making it more relatable. This approach fosters inclusivity and representation, allowing students to see their identity reflected in the curriculum. It sparks creative engagement, encouraging critical thinking about integrating contemporary elements into historical contexts.

This could further present an interesting concept for students to engage in. By blending tradition with innovation, students can appreciate both classical art and their own school identity. I would set this for year 9s, for a display-exhibition. Students would be given classical paintings to paint on-top of, replacing the dress of the subject with a school uniform.

This lesson would engage in topics such as: colour matching (Mixing), negative space, clothing folds and cloth dynamics, postmodernism.

School Subjects

Schools are rich environments for learning, beyond our specialised subjects. Creating spaces for supportive collaboration could extend beyond the classroom. As art teachers, we can play a pivotal role as catalysts for community building between subjects. By actively engaging with our colleagues in other subjects, participating in school events, creating competitions, and initiating extra curricular projects we reinforce the idea that learning is a shared journey.

Imagine an art classroom where teachers and students work side by side, not just within the confines of the curriculum, but in projects that reflect and celebrate the community’s diversity and shared experiences. This kind of environment encourages collaborative projects, cross-disciplinary learning, and a collective approach to problem-solving. It makes the classroom a dynamic space where everyone—students, teachers, and the community—are co-creators of knowledge and art.

Blacklight Art by Brad Lawrence

Some ideas for cross-curricular activities include:

Science:

Blacklight art - Combines creative expression with scientific principles. In art, students explore colour theory, design, and creativity using fluorescent paints that glow under blacklight. In science, they learn about the properties of ultraviolet (UV) light, fluorescence, and the electromagnetic spectrum. This interdisciplinary approach enhances their understanding of both subjects but also demonstrates how scientific concepts can be applied in artistic ways.

Drama: Schools often have drama productions, offering to collaborate to make background-displays, props and advertisements for this will help build a bridge between the two creative art subjects.

English:

Art and literature are often thought of under the same breath, art can create worlds for the eye just as writers and poets conjure affective encounters for the mind. The interplay between these subjects is vast. Students could create artworks illustrating a scene from a children's book (perhaps one of their choosing?), students could create artworks alongside words using typography and calligraphy techniques, or students could use words more formally in writing tasks, research and presentations. One particular activity I have enjoyed teaching is using words tonally, to create a textured and rich image.

As new art teachers, we are here to build bridges, foster collaboration, and create spaces where every student feels connected to the broader community. Let’s step into our new schools with open minds, ready to weave our unique threads into the tapestry of the community we are joining.